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Todd Kohlhepp, aged 45, was a successful businessman running his own estate agency, living on a sprawling 95-acre spread. He was a licensed pilot, a former graphic designer who rode high-performance motorbikes and claimed to be creating a wildlife refuge “for the next generation”. He owned a second home in the nearby town of Moore.

But when police searching for a missing woman traced her mobile phone signal to Kohlhepp’s ranch, they stumbled upon a scene of horror that has shocked even crimehardened America, and untangled a mystery that led to at least seven savage slayings.

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Todd Kohlhepp is accused of killing up to seven people in South Carolina

Drawn by the sounds of desperate banging, police found Kala Brown, aged 30, who had been missing for two months, locked inside Kohlhepp’s industrial metal storage container, “chained like a dog”, said Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright.

Kala had worked for Kohlhepp for several weeks, cleaning houses that he was offering for sale. With her boyfriend Charles Carver, 32, she went on August 31 to Kohlhepp’s ranch, where he had offered to pay them to help clear some underbrush.

But shortly after their arrival “he pulled out a gun and took them hostage”, reveals Kala’s friend Daniel Herren.

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Kala Brown was found inside Kohlhepp's property chained like a dog

Kala watched as Kohlhepp shot and killed her boyfriend, and then struggled as he dragged her to the 30ft x 15ft container, where she was held chained in the dark for two months until her rescue last week. Kohlhepp fed his captive once daily, around 6pm, and occasionally led her outside the container for brief walks, like a dog on a leash, around the property hidden from prying eyes by tall grass and trees.

“He never took the chain off of her,” says Herren. When found, Kala had chains around her neck and ankle.

Sniffer dogs were brought in, quickly finding the body of Kala’s boyfriend, shot multiple times. “It was gruesome,” admits Spartanburg County Coroner Rusty Clevenger, who has seen his fair share of murder victims.

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Kohlhepp buried the bodies in his farmland

After his arrest, Kohlhepp pointed investigators to an area near the container where he had buried two more bodies. Police identified the victims as Meagan Coxie, 25, and her husband Johnny, 29.

A troubled local couple with a history of brushes with the law, they were reported missing on December 22, 2015, shortly after they had been released from jail. Meagan’s mother had paid their bail so that Meagan could start a new job. The couple were both wanted on warrants for various offences, and had a history of begging, so foul play was not initially suspected when they disappeared. It is not known how they came to meet Kohlhepp, but it was to prove fatal. Meagan was shot in the head and Johnny in the torso, autopsies revealed.

Their bodies were fully clothed, and detectives say there is no way to know if they were sexually assaulted. Their baby, now 18-months old, had been left with family.

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Kala's boyfriend Charles Carver was found dead with shot wounds

Police found assault rifles and numerous guns in Kohlhepp’s compound, including two 9mm guns armed with silencers. “It was unbelievable how much ammo he had,” says prosecutor Barry Barnette.

Under questioning, Kohlhepp confessed to killing four more people, in one of South Carolina’s most shocking unsolved mass murders.

The slayings in 2003 had been featured on TV show America’s Most Wanted, and a $25,000 reward was posted, but the killer had remained at large – until now.

Kohlhepp was “calm and polite,” says Sheriff Wright, as he told detectives details that only the killer would know about the quadruple homicide at Superbike Motorsports, a high-performance motorcycle shop in Chesnee, about 15 miles north of Spartanburg.

The body of mechanic Chris Sherbert was found slumped over, as though he were still working on a bike. Beverly Guy, the store’s bookkeeper, was shot as she left the bathroom. Store owner Scott Ponder and service manager Brian Lucas were found shot near the store’s entrance. All were killed execution-style with the same pistol.

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Kala and Charlie went to Kohlhepp’s ranch to help him clear some underbrush in August

For the families of those victims, Kohlhepp’s arrest was the end of a 13-year nightmare.

“My emotions are running from joy to crying, even feeling sorry for the family [of Kohlhepp] – I feel for them,” says Beverly Guy’s husband Terry, who admits suffering depression and losing 5st after the slayings. “But the gentleman has to pay for what he did.”

“She stayed alive for two months. In a pure hell. And if she had not been found alive, we wouldn’t be sitting here having an interview right now.”

Brian Lucas’s father Tom hopes to confront Kohlhepp, saying: “We want to see the face. I want to look at him and to try to use that in healing.”

As Kohlhepp’s estate underwent forensic examination, his dark, tormented past was also being exhumed. Police revealed that he had been convicted of kidnapping at the age of 15, in Arizona in 1986.

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Kohlhepp pointed investigators to where Meagan Coxie and her husband Johnny were buried

“In that case he took a 14-year-old girl,” said prosecutor Barry Barnette. “She was babysitting at the time. He took her to his house at gunpoint, duct-taped her, tied her up and raped her… and threatened to kill everybody in her family,” if she ever spoke of her ordeal.

After Kohlhepp freed her, the victim called police. He admitted the attack, claiming he did it because he was enraged at his father, William Sampsell, who divorced from his mother, Regina, when Kohlhepp was barely one-year old. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and had to register as a sex offender for life.

But he had evidently been a tortured and troubled child from an early age. “The only emotion Todd seems capable of showing is anger,” lamented his father. His mother recalled Kohlhepp making repeated threats to kill himself as a child. He shot a dog with an air rifle, and killed his goldfi sh with bleach.

Reviewing a psychiatric report, the judge in his teenage kidnapping case wrote: “At less than the age of nine, this juvenile was impulsive, explosive, and preoccupied with sexual content. He has not changed.

“He has been unabatedly aggressive to others and destructive of property since nursery school. He destroys his own clothing, personal possessions and pets, apparently on whim.

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Meagan and Johnny Coxie were reported missing on December 22, 2015

“He is extremely self-centred with high levels of anti-social personality functioning, and likely continuing aggressive behaviours toward others in the future.”

The judge, declaring Kohlhepp “behaviourally and emotionally dangerous”, had little hope that more than two years of psychiatric counselling would change Kohlhepp’s destructive ways. Yet Kohlhepp emerged from almost 14 years behind bars to forge a successful life of seeming respectability.

His LinkedIn page boasts that he “graduated top of class” from Central Arizona College where he studied computer science, going on to study business administration at the University of South Carolina Upstate, graduating in 2007. He earned his private pilot’s licence and his estate agent’s licence.

Murderers given whole life tariffs

Fri, November 25, 2016

The prisoners serving whole life tariffs in the UK.

Montage of 55 of the whole life tariff prisoners who are currently being held in British prisons. Thomas Mair today joins the most notorious criminals who are destined to spend the rest of their lives behind bars.

Kohlhepp made no secret to friends and colleagues that he was on the national register of sex offenders – though he told people it was based on trumped-up charges after he “had gone joyriding with a girl” and upset her father, a prominent local official, said his employee Cherry Laurens.

“He’s not the kind of person to do something like this,” she says. “Working with him he was an excellent boss.”

But behind the 7ft-high chainlink fence surrounding his rural retreat, Kohlhepp was a killer his friends and colleagues would barely recognise. While Kohlhepp remains jailed while awaiting trial, police continue to search his property – and his warped psyche – for further victims.